#Art et Essai

[mllenugget]

Gardian Miku

She says that if you support bullfighting in any shape or form then vai t’en cagar a la vinha e pòrta me la clau

France → Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur → Bouches du Rhône → Camargue

[boycritter]

i have had a test/project for every single class im taking in the last two weeks. thank christ its over

[bernardcalet]

Figurant, 2013

Neons

Exposition « Winterreise »

Galerie Art et essai, Université Rennes 2

[deathlessathanasia]

Greek mythology books (nonfiction)

I was asked about this, so here are some books I like, in no specific order:

Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources by Timothy Gantz.

The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology by Robin Hard.

A Companion to Greek Mythology edited by Ken Dowden and Nial Livingstone.

The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology edited by Roger D. Woodard.

The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition by D. C. Feeney.

The Daily Life of the Greek Gods by Giulia Sissa and Marcel Detienne.

Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore. by Jennifer Larson.

A new Companion to Homer edited by Ian Morris and Barry Powell.

The Cambridge Guide to Homer edited by Corinne Ondine Pache.

Homer's Divine Audience: The Iliad's Reception on Mount Olympus by Tobias Myers.

The Iliad – the Poem of Zeus by Pietro Pucci.

Zeus in the Odyssey by J. Marks.

Brill's Companion to Hesiod edited by Franco Montanari, Chr. Tsagalis and Antonios Rengakos.

•The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod edited by Alexander C. Loney and Stephen Scully.

Hesiod's Theogony: from Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost by Stephen Scully.

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece by Kirk Ormand.

The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Constructions and Reconstructions by Richard Hunter.

Hesiod and Classical Greek Poetry: Reception and Transformation in the Fifth Century BCE by Zoe Stamatopoulou.

The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion edited by Marco Fantuzzi and Christos Tsagalis.

The Tradition of the Trojan War in Homer and the Epic Cycle by Jonathan S. Burgess.

The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics by M. L. West.

The politics of Olympus : form and meaning in the major Homeric hymns by Jenny Strauss Clay.

Traditional Themes and the Homeric Hymns by Cora Angier Sowa.

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary and Interpretive Essays edited by Helene P. Foley.

The Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite: Introduction, Text, and Commentary by Andrew Faulkner.

Orphic Traditions and the Birth of the Gods by Dwayne A. Meisner.

The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation by Gábor Betegh.

The Derveni Papyrus: Unearthing Ancient Mysteries edited by Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez.

Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies: An Ontological Exploration by Olaf Almqvist.

When the Gods Were Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East by Carolina López-Ruiz.

Mythica by Emily Hauser.

Women and Weasels: Mythologies of Birth in Ancient Greece and Rome by Maurizio Bettini.

Ancient Stepmothers: Myth, Misogyny, and Reality by Patricia A. Watson.

Gender and the Interpretation of Classical Myth by Lillian E. Doherty.

The Story of Myth by Sarah Iles Johnston.

Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds by Daniel Ogden.

Zeus by Ken Dowden.

Classical Zeus: A Study in Art and Literature by Karim Arafat.

Aphrodite by Monica S. Cyrino.

The Origin of Aphrodite by Stephanie Lynn Budin.

Entre ciel et guerre. Figures d’Aphrodite en Grèce ancienne by Gabriella Pironti.

The Hera of Zeus: Intimate Enemy, Ultimate Spouse by Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and Gabriella Pironti.

Hermes by Arlene Allan.

Artemis by Stephanie Budin.

Apollo by Fritz Graf.

The Power of Thetis: Allusion and Interpretation in the Iliad by Laura M. Slatkin.

The Staying Power of Thetis: Allusion, Interaction, and Reception from Homer to the 21st Century edited by Maciej Paprocki, Gary Patrick Vos, David John Wright.

Athena by Susan Deacy.

Dionysos by Richard Seaford.

Perseus by Daniel Ogden.

Herakles by Emma Stafford.

The Oxford Handbook of Heracles edited by Daniel Ogden.

Heracles in Early Greek Epic edited by Christos C. Tsagalis.

Helen of Troy: Beauty, Myth, Devastation by Ruby Blondell.

Achilles in Love: Intertextual Studies by Marco Fantuzzi.

Medea by Emma Griffiths.

Looking at Medea: Essays and a Translation of Euripides’ Tragedy edited by David Stuttard.

Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art edited by James J. Clauss and Sarah Iles Johnston.

[sgiandubh]

Maecenas

This, just in:

Remember (ROFLMAO) the Hoolan Ensemble, a contemporary chamber music collective based in GLA, which wrote the music for the Royal Conservatoire's winning project of the Write Start Award ((https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/766161304245403648/a-good-man?source=share), last year?

Wee reminder - the award was established and funded by S, in 2024 and it offers £5,000, which will allow the winners to develop their own creative project (more on this, here: https://www.rcs.ac.uk/news-stories/write-start-2024-winner/):

Foreign Body, a silent movie project, is now completed and Hoolan Ensemble thanked the generous benefactor, who might probably not even share this on his IG account. #ochdontmention

You can watch it on #YouTube, here:

In their own words, this is 'A dreamlike meditation on the female body exploring themes of self-objectification, alienation and fetishisation. Conceived as a modern response to Germaine Dulac's 1928 surrealist masterpiece 'The Seashell and the Clergyman'

I watched it, of course (18 minutes tops, but feels longer) and while this is clearly not my cup of tea, I did enjoy the esthetics, while the message still remains to be refined, in my humble opinion. However, all the referential bells and whistles paying homage to Germaine Dulac's hermetic masterpiece are included and I was particularly interested that he chose to actively support a clearly feminist movie (both in inspiration and results), dealing with alienation and fetishization.

A bit ironic, when you consider the ongoing Sassenach Winter Tour, where both are in ample supply. But the Drooling Mommies couldn't care less: after six hours, that post barely made 40 likes and that is probably because of prominent IG Onlies accounts', such as @bella_sam_heughan_fan, sharing it.

The chasm between the amateur of 1930s European art et essai cinema and that same guy peddling booze in a reasonably embarrassing hoodie has never been wider. It goes to show, however, you'd better not judge a book by its cover. And I am, as always, so damn glad I didn't.

There is a whole side of These Two's lives this fandom has no idea about. It is a very good thing, I believe.

PS: mulțumesc din inimă, scumpo. 😘😘

Later edit: I am very glad he finally got it and shared the RCS' story:

It was just about time.

[nekropsii]

The thing about Analysis is that no one has a perfect understanding of any piece of fiction - especially not something as dense, intricate, storied, and personal as Homestuck - so the appeal of Analysis is half in the information itself and half in the character of the Analyst.

No Analyst is ever going to be 100% correct, all the time, forever. Especially not incontestably so. I've definitely posted things that are either wrong or I just do not agree with nowadays. People evolve. Realizations are had. Thoughts, feelings, interests, personal politics, beliefs, times, and lives change, and therefore so does the lens in which the Analyst is viewing their media of choice.

Analysis is a Conversation more than it is a Definite Relaying of Facts. It is an evolving dialogue. It isn't comparable to a pure, mechanical summary of a plot or character thread, it is an Art Form. People stick by an Artist because they enjoy their Style - an intangible little thing, also constantly in flux, sometimes in minute ways and sometimes in drastic ways, as the Artist continues to hone their craft, and live the life they've been given. Same rules apply to Analysis. I just use words as a brush and a pre-existing piece of fiction as my canvas to express what I, in the moment, believe to be truths, and what I, in the moment, feel, and what I, in the moment, think is worth talking about. These things can change after a decade, a year, a month, a week, a day, an hour.

Analysts do not think or talk about fiction while seeing them as rigid mathematical equations that can be definitively solved. They do not view fiction through cold, robotic eyes, seeing only hard facts and definite truths. An Analyst does not necessarily see an indisputable "correct way" to read a piece of fiction, either. They are viewing art through a lens infinitely warped, and scratched, and colored and recolored by who they are as a person and what their circumstances are. Your favorite Analyst's read of a piece of fiction is deeply revealing of who they are as a person, what they find important, what they've been through, their politics, et cetera.

But that's all obvious, isn't it? That an Artist's work is personal. We all get caught up in our opinions on how right or wrong we are as people. And that's all fair play - it's to be expected when you post your feelings on the Internet. But not enough love is given to the fact that this is Art, too.

The humble Essay on Fiction is just as soul-bearing as a Poem or a Painting. How beautiful that is.

[inlandempir]

post on one of the dev forums for disco elysium, titled "THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD". text version beneath the cut

There's been a lot of art and tech talk so far, it's all kinda dry or saccharine. I think it's time to juice it up by throwing in a proper essay.

THE BENEFITS OF A MODERN FANTASY WORLD

The world of No Truce! (we do have a proper name for it, but we’re shy) is not what you’d call “a generic genre world”. It is not pseudo-medieval stasis, as Forgotten Realms was, nor is it Fallout���s campy barbarism with guns. It is also not a Harry Potter/Batman/vampire fantasy world, which is basically “our world with a secret/special world within it”. Neither is it the tech-obsessed ‘punks’ of steam and cyber. It’s a modern fantasy world, a fantasy world in its modernity, which roughly corresponds to the middle part of our XXth century. Now that kind of thing opens up an array of new possibilities. It is a world with a promise of non-staticness, meaning, things appear undecided — they could go one way or the other. It is close enough to our own world for things to have meaning in it, it is a proper frame in which to explore themes relevant to our own society such as bigotry, power relations, politics, bureaucratic apparati, geopolitical relations, philosophy, ideology, religion et cetera. A pseudo-medieval world is not a proper frame for truly exploring themes of, for example, sexuality, for it lacks 1) a proper concept of sexuality, 2) an actual idea of societal progress and 3) a clear ideological dominant, which would be the place where values come from. All you can do in a static, societally unstructured world is give out-of-place shoutouts to present day communities for cheap popularity (“this is exactly my sexual orientation, how did they know?!”).

We find the ideological dominant missing because the western world is traditionally culturally critical of ideological dominants – critical of both state and religion. Anyhow, a classic fantasy world would feature two main ideologies – the “good” and the “evil”, of which the former is selfless and compassionate, but the other one is selfish and cruel. The attempts to overcome that have given us the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is an asshole and pessimism rules the day. Unsurprisingly, Grittywelt is also static as hell and meaningful change is foreclosed from it. It is a “protection from false hopes”. As such, it is heavily unrealistic. Much more realistic would be people living in super gritty conditions, but not looking the part, that is, not really noticing the abnormal harshness of their conditions, because they don’t have much to compare them to, and being hopeful towards the next day, because surprise! This is how you do it. Survive, I mean. Being depressed is a luxury. In a way, I’d say we’re trying to create the obverse of the Grittywelt – a world in which everyone is empathizable, sort of a hero of their own story.

The modern era is also a fitting vessel for anachronisms – do we not have actual cyborg limbs and donkey-pulled carts operating in the same world at the modern era? Capitalism can also contain little feudalisms in a way, in which a single man or single family controls the entire economy of a town or a village and profits from it. And at the same time, it can also contain little socialist utopias, scientist villages, in which everything is provided by the State. Aside from being a basic feature of reality (anachronism is nothing more than time failing to fit the stereotype about it), it is also a lovable creative tool, allowing for a plethora of what-if-scenarios. Imagine a modern world, only without television; imagine a modern world in which there never was a global war, imagine a world in which fossil fuels are less available. Now, if you will, imagine one which has forgotten its antiquity, and one, in which there is not just water between the continents, but something worse as well — an anti-reality mass we call “pale” (also more on that later). Now imagine one, which has a legitimate and operative “religion of history” in place, which seeks for people it deems special enough to be the “vessel of progress”. (This is not an alternate history thing, by the way. An alternate history takes place in our world quite recognizably and has no more than one divergence point from history as it happened.)

One might ask, why would we not create an even more modern world, if we wanted to maximise our possibilities? Well one of the answers is that it would have destroyed the necessary element of escapism, another is that we cannot create a good alternate Information Era because we ourselves fail to understand the Information Era (More precicely, we have the information era in its infancy and it works via radio relays). We are too close to it and it is too new to understand it, it is “in progress”. The third reason would be that technology is not a fascinating subject for modern science fiction. It’s become a natural part of our reality. We don’t believe it’s going to save us anymore – it has failed to deliver for too long. I am of the belief that the themes of science fiction today are societal, political and psychological (one could maybe add aesthetical to it, for we also love the world for its beauty). All fantastic or sci-fi elements are means for best exploring those themes.

I have filled my page. That’s all for the time being. Thank you for reading.

Martin Luiga Writer

[johannestevans]

New Short & General Updates

Hello hello!

(Crossposted from JohannesTEvans.co.uk)

I have been tinkering away on the website and have made a great many changes and additions, and I’m very pleased with how it’s coming along. The homepage has been altered to show a selection of hand-picked shorts and essays rather than the archives, and I’m thinking I’ll change these out semi-regularly.

I have now mostly completed work on the Tags page, meaning that it’s incredibly easy now to browse works by tag. You can click different settings, characters, kinks, or themes, and then you’ll be able to browse through the lists of results. It’s been my long-time dream for my website to have tags as specific and searchable as the ones used on Ao3, and this is an excellent start!

Of the approximately 500 works I’ve made available in my website’s back catalogue, I have gone through and added tags to approximately 350, but I’m still working through and will soon have added tags to everything. Obviously, going forward, new posts will be tagged in detail from the start.

The site now has an about page; a contact form with information about commissions or collaborations; and a calendar with my upcoming planned events – my Gallery, where I’ll display commissioned artwork and featured fanworks, as well as art that I buy at cons and such, is under construction; and also under construction is the full Directory of Work, where every work is displayed under genre and title.

New Romance Short: Bird Song

Two men sit on a bench and watch the birds together. 

7k, rated M. A man walking in the park notices a regular stranger on a bench, watching the ducks and swans, and one day strikes up a conversation with him. 

Sexy disabled man who uses a cane and supportive aids, chronically in pain, flirting with and then dating a Deaf bloke. Lots of birds, some ships and shanties, lots of flirtation and banter. Adapted from a TweetFic.

On JohannesTEvans.co.uk / / On Patreon / / On Medium

And as you’ll be able to see with the above post, I’ve now launched a subscriber option!

You can browse full details of Subscriber Benefits here, but it’s basically just a general support option similar to Patreon without my being constrained by Patreon’s content restrictions or their increasingly irritating random hiding of my newest works, as happened recently with A Clean Pig, where they hid the entirety of a 13k erotic BDSM short about power and transness and disability because there was one single line reference to sexual abuse by cops and police. As soon as I changed the word “rape” to “abuse” in the Patreon post, they unhid it. So arbitrary, so ridiculous.

The cheapest option for subscriber benefits is $3/month or $30/year, but if you don’t want to subscribe on a premium basis at all, no worries!

These newsletter updates will continue to include events, new eBooks, new anthologies or publications I’m in as well as new works posted. In addition, the just under 500 works in my back catalogue remaining free to read, serial updates will continue to be free to read for everyone, as well as works that I crosspost directly onto Tumblr, Ao3, et cetera. As Monstrous May is nearly upon us, a bunch of my works for that will be publicly available.

Honestly, I’ve been meaning to properly launch a website for quite a while, so kudos to Patreon for actually giving me the oomph to do it, but I genuinely am concerned about increasing censorship and oversight on basically every platform, especially as a trans, disabled creator who writes not just erotica, but other content that a lot of these platforms automatically deem as objectionable, such as works about trans and disabled and queer identities and bodies, works about recovering from trauma, criticism of rape culture and patriarchy, et cetera.

This also means that I’ll be able to work on pieces with darker themes without fear of Patreon removing them or shutting down my account – works that focus on incestuous abuse, for example, works that delve into consensual non-consent or more fucked-up consent issues; and not in my opinion fucked-up at all, but also banned by Patreon’s content guidelines, works about erotic hypnosis, as well as more in-depth works that feature feeding kink and similar.

I’m not going to be shutting down my Patreon or my Medium account, so no fear there – if none of the above interests you, you’ll be grand to just stay subscribed on Patreon; Medium has never really given me any cause for concern as to censorship, so I’ll post those fictional works over to there if and when I write them.

In the event that a new work of mine isn’t appropriate to Patreon, I will simply post it here and on Medium only.

Thank you so so much for your patience as I’ve stumbled my way through setting up the site, especially if you have been one of the unfortunate victims of my dozens-strong battering of your inbox with back-posted emails, and I hope you enjoy browsing and exploring it as I add new things!

As well as fleshing out my gallery, I do want to include a page at some point of friends, compatriots, and similar artists to myself – while part of my focus on this site is and will continue to be keeping it quite pared-back and generally text-focused, where people can just come and read as much as they like without a potential for doomscrolling as on socials, I do think I can include links and additions to other people’s work and to similar queer businesses without putting advertisements all over the place or having them been invasive and distracting, as one sees with banner ads and so forth.

It’s also my plan to later include a local store as a page where people will be able to buy PDFs and eBooks directly from me – this will not include erotic works, at least to begin with, but only my non-adult works – and possibly the sticker and badge designs I sell at conventions. The option for that is not included on my current website plan, but I’ll upgrade once my site is more established and making more of its own money – other additional things I intend to include once I upgrade are a more robust tag search, where one will hopefully be able to cross-search with tags; and multiple payment providers, so that one can subscribe via PayPal or similar without using debit/credit card information through the WordPress client.

Now that the website is mostly established, I’m excited to be working on some new projects – I’ll definitely be publishing at least a few new erotic shorts over the course of Monstrous May, and at the moment I’m going between working on a 1970s-set romance novella about a fat gay lad in university who ends up finding a mentor in a classmate’s gloriously fat, gay, ridiculous uncle, and a medieval Norse work about a young British girl who is apprenticed to a witch after she’s kidnapped and brought home by Viking slavers – that one has no romance elements, but is instead mostly about rescuing cats, with some light fantasy elements.

I am currently on a positive barrage of new medications and they are beginning to help, but chronic fatigue is still kicking my arse more days of the week than less, so I’m not yet certain when you’ll see a bunch of new updates at once, as you normally get from me as we come into the warmth and brightness of early summer. Fingers crossed it’s sooner rather than later!

I have booked our tickets for BristolCon so myself and my partner, Lorenzo, will definitely be attendance in October of this year – I’ve not yet booked a table as I’m going to see how I recover in the next few months, but if possible, we will try to have a table selling books, badges, and other merch.

I was very sad not to be able to do EasterCon this year in Belfast, but with my fatigue on top of the travel cost it just wasn’t feasible – very excited that both FantasyCon 2026 and EasterCon 2027 are in Glasgow, though, as Glasgow is very doable for us in terms of travel from Bradford, and similarly excited for next year’s EasterCon in Birmingham, as that’s even easier!

Beyond that, between working on the website and sleeping, I’m not actually able to do much of late, not even LEGO – although I have been playing Nier: Automata, which is every bit as transgender as every person who’s ever recommended it to me has said, and I wholly recommend it!

Again, thank you so much for your support and patience, and hope you enjoy playing about the new website and reading to your heart’s content! Please feel free to drop me a line, comment, or use one of the contact forms if anything stops working, or if you’re interested in discussing anything else.

[mostly-mundane-atla]

Inupiaq Books

This post was inspired by learning about and daydreaming about visiting Birchbark Books, a Native-owned bookstore in Minneapolis, so there will be some links to buy the books they have on this list.

Starting Things Off with Two Inupiaq Poets

Joan Naviyuk Kane, whose available collections include:

Hyperboreal

Black Milk Carbon

The Cormorant Hunter's Wife

She also wrote Dark Traffic, but this site doesn't seem to carry any copies

Dg Nanouk Okpik, whose available collections include

Blood Snow

Corpse Whale

Fictionalized Accounts of Historical Events

A Line of Driftwood: the Ada Blackjack Story by Diane Glancy, also available at Birchwood Books, is a fictionalized account of Ada Blackjack's experience surviving the explorers she was working with on Wrangel Island, based on historical records and Blackjack's own diary.

Goodbye, My Island by Rie Muñoz is a historical fiction aimed at younger readers with little knowledge of the Inupiat about a little girl living on King Island. Reads a lot like an American Girl book in case anyone wants to relive that nostalgia

Blessing's Bead by Debby Dahl Edwardson is a Young Adult historical fiction novel about hardships faced by two generations of girls in the same family, 70 years apart. One reviewer pointed out that the second part of the book, set in the 1980s, is written in Village English, so that might be a new experience for some of you

Photography

Menadelook: and Inupiaq Teacher's Photographs of Alaska Village Life, 1907-1932 edited by Eileen Norbert is, exactly as the title suggests, a collection of documentary photographs depicting village life in early 20th century Alaska.

Nuvuk, the Northernmost: Altered Land, Altered Lives in Barrow, Alaska by David James Inulak Lume is another collection of documentary photographs published in 2013, with a focus on the wildlife and negative effects of climate change

Guidebooks (i only found one specifically Inupiaq)

Plants That We Eat/Nauriat Niģiñaqtuat: from the Traditional Wisdom of Iñupiat Elders of Northwest Alaska by Anore Jones is a guide to Alaskan vegetation that in Inupiat have subsisted on for generations upon generations with info on how to identify them and how they were traditionally used.

Anthropology

Kuuvangmiut Subsistence: Traditional Eskimo Life in the Latter Twentieth Century by Douglas B. Anderson et al details traditional lifestyles and subsistance customs of the Kobuk River Inupiat

Life at the Swift Water Place: Northwest Alaska at the Threshold of European Contact by Douglas D. Anderson and Wanni W. Anderson: a multidisciplinary study of a specific Kobuk River group, the Amilgaqtau Yaagmiut, at the very beginning of European and Asian trade.

Upside Down: Seasons Among the Nunamiut by Margaret B. Blackman is a collection of essays reflecting on almost 20 years of anthropological fieldwork focused on the Nunamiut of Anuktuvuk Pass: the traditional culture and the adaption to new technology.

Nonfiction

Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement by Dan O'Neill is about Project Chariot. In an attempt to find peaceful uses of wartime technology, Edward Teller planned to drop six nukes on the Inupiaq village of Point Hope, officially to build a harbor but it can't be ignored that the US government wanted to know the effects radiation had on humans and animals. The scope is wider than the Inupiat people involved and their resistance to the project, but as it is no small part of this lesser discussed moment of history, it only feels right to include this

Fifty Miles From Tomorrow: a Memoir of Alaska and the Real People by William L. Iģģiaģruk Hensley is an autobiography following the author's tradition upbringing, pursuit of an education, and his part in the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act, where he and other Alaska Native activists had to teach themselves United States Law to best lobby the government for land and financial compensation as reparations for colonization.

Sadie Bower Neakok: An Iñupiaq Woman by Margaret B. Blackman is a biography of the titular Sadie Bower Neakok, a beloved public figure of Utqiagvik, former Barrow. Neakok grew up one of ten children of an Inupiaq woman named Asianggataq, and the first white settler to live in Utqiagvik/Barrow, Charles Bower. She used the out-of-state college education she received to aid her community as a teacher, a wellfare worker, and advocate who won the right for Native languages to be used in court when defendants couldn't speak English, and more.

Folktales and Oral Histories

Folktales of the Riverine and Costal Iñupiat/Unipchallu Uqaqtuallu Kuungmiuñļu Taģiuģmiuñļu edited by Wanni W. Anderson and Ruth Tatqaviñ Sampson, transcribed by Angeline Ipiiļik Newlin and translated by Michael Qakiq Atorak is a collection of eleven Inupiaq folktales in English and the original Inupiaq.

The Dall Sheep Dinner Guest: Iñupiaq Narratives of Northwest Alaska by Wanni W. Anderson is a collection of Kobuk River Inupiaq folktales and oral histories collected from Inupiat storytellers and accompanied by Anderson's own essays explaining cultural context. Unlike the other two collections of traditional stories mentioned on this list, this one is only written in English.

Ugiuvangmiut Quliapyuit/King Island Tales: Eskimo Historu and Legends from Bering Strait compiled and edited by Lawrence D. Kaplan, collected by Gertrude Analoak, Margaret Seeganna, and Mary Alexander, and translated and transcribed by Gertrude Analoak and Margaret Seeganna is another collection of folktales and oral history. Focusing on the Ugiuvangmiut, this one also contains introductions to provide cultural context and stories written in both english and the original Inupiaq.

The Winter Walk by Loretta Outwater Cox is an oral history about a pregnant widow journeying home with her two children having to survive the harsh winter the entire way. This is often recommended with a similar book detailing Athabascan survival called Two Old Women.

Dictionaries and Language Books

Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary by Donald H. Webster and Wilfred Zibell, with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster, is an older Inupiaq to English dictionary. It predates the standardization of Inupiaq spelling, uses some outdated and even offensive language that was considered correct at the time of its publication, and the free pdf provided by UAF seems to be missing some pages. In spite of this it is still a useful resource. The words are organized by subject matter rather than alphabetically, each entry indicating if it's specific to any one dialect, and the illustrations are quite charming.

Let's Learn Eskimo by Donald H. Webster with illustrations by Thelma A. Webster makes a great companion to the Iñupiat Eskimo Dictionary, going over grammar and sentence structure rather than translations. The tables of pronouns are especially helpful in my opinion.

Ilisaqativut.org also has some helpful tools and materials and recommendations for learning the Inupiat language with links to buy physical books, download free pdfs, and look through searchable online versions

[garadinervi]

Andrea Cortellessa, Claude Simon, alla ricerca della pianta perduta, «Antinomie», May 2, 2025

(image: Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, Géographie des plantes Équinoxiales: Tableau physique des Andes et Pays voisins, (hand-colored print), from Essai sur la géographie des plantes, 1805, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)

[fruity-pontmercy]

Les Mis adaptations and apolitical appropriation

I think it's no secret on this blog that I love the original Les Mis 1980 concept album in French, and that I also love comparing different versions of the stage musical. I've noticed that Les Mis seems to get progressively more vaguely apolitical as time goes on, not only in the way it's viewed in our culture, but in the actual text as well.

It's natural for specifics to be lost in adaptation. It's easier to get people to care about 'the people vs. the king' in a relatively short musical rather than actually facing the audience with the absolute mess that were 19th century french politics (monarchist orleanists vs monarchist legitimists vs imperialist vs bonapartist democrats vs every flavour of republican imaginable). Still, I feel that as time goes on, as more revivals and adaptations of the stage musical come out, the more watered down its politics become. Like, Les Mis at it's core is just meant to be a fancily written, drawn out political essay, right?

In a way I feel that the 1980 concept album almost tried to modernise it with its symbols of progress. Yes, through Enjolras' infamous disco segment (and other similar allusions to the ideals of social change), but perhaps most interestingly to me, through one short line that threw me off when I first heard it, because it seems so insignificant, but might actually be the most explicitly leftist line of all of Les Mis.

"Son coeur vibrait à gauche et il le proclama" (roughly "His heart beat to the left and he proclaimed it" i.e: he was a leftist) Feuilly says, while speaking of the now dead général Lamarque in Les Amis de L'ABC.

What's that? An actual mention of leftism??? in MY vaguely progressive yet apolitical musical??? More seriously, this mention of leftism, clashing with the rest of the musical due to it's seeming anachronism, is interesting not because it's actually more political than anything else in Les Mis, rather, because it's not scared to explicitly name what it's trying to do.

But we've come a long way from the Concept Album days, it's been 43 years, and Les Misérables is now one of the most famous and beloved musicals in the entire world. It's been revived and reimagined and adapted in a million ways, in different mediums, in different languages and countries, and it's clear that it's changed along with it's audience.

On top of pointing out a cool line in my favourite version of the musical, I wanted to write this post to reflect on the perception of the political message of this work. We as a Les Mis fandom on Tumblr are very political, I don't need to tell you that, however, I feel that because this very left leaning space has sprung out of a work we all love so much, we oftentimes forget to revisit it from a more objective point of view.

Les Misérables has a history of being misrepresented, this has been true since it's publication, since american confederate soldiers became entranced with their censored translation Lee's Miserables. However, with it's musical adaptation, this misinterpretation has been made not only more accessible but also easier. As much as I love musical theatre and I think it is at it's best an incredible art form able to communicate complex themes visulally by the masses for the masses, I think it'd be idealistic to ignore the fact that the people who can afford to go see musicals regularly are, usually, not the common folk. Broadway and the West End are industries which, like most, need money to keep them afloat, and are loved people of all political backgrounds (and unfortunately, often older conservatives) not just communists on tumblr. We've seen the way Les Miz UK's social media team constantly misses the mark regarding different social issues, and the way Cameron Makintosh has used the musical to propagate his transphobia, and most of us can agree that these actions are in complete antithesis with the message of Les Misérables as a novel.

But I must ask, how does Les Mis ,as a West End musical in it's current form, actually drive a leftist message, and how are we as a community helping if every time someone relating to the musical messes up if we just claim they "don't get it"?

I'm thinking in particular of incidents like last october, where Just Stop Oil crashed Les Mis at the West End. Whether you think it's good activism or not is not the question I think, this instance is interesting particularly because it shows that, outside of Les Misérables analysis circles and fandom spaces, it is not recognised as an inherently leftist, political or activist work, and instead of just saying they completely missed the point of the musical, I think it'd be interesting to take a step back and look at what the musical as it stands actually represents in our culture today.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, so I won't try to give one, but I do hope we can reflect on this a bit.

[spelllingandthemysteryschool]

i do like to believe every work of art properly comes into your life at the exact moment you need it. every painting i have loved i saw when it meant something to me that it would not have before. every poem i’ve loved appeared before me only when some part of it was sure to strike a chord deep inside my heart. and i think sometimes you read an essay or watch a movie or listen to a song without really taking it in and then it comes back around for you to engage with again and really truly be moved by when the time is right. et cetera

[boycritter]

lowkey i dont have Any Homework and this is really unsettling me

[tomato-greens]

Some Very Problematic, Ambivalent, and Disorganized Thoughts About Drag

sorry everybody

for @skrtomg & @carnovsky

thinking about this because of Chappell Roan, who is performing a kind of drag that I'm most familiar with under the name "bio queen," which is a pretty outdated name I think - in essence, she is a cis woman (as far as I'm aware) who often dresses up in an exaggerated gendered performance using aesthetic conventions elaborated upon and popularized by drag queens

Chappell Roan in a typical look at the 2025 Grammys

I've tried to walk through these thoughts before, but on multiple occasions, a couple of specific people in my offline life (who I am no longer close to, to be fair!) have really taken me to task for questioning drag's inherently (?) revolutionary (?) politics; both of these people were cis straight women who were huge fans of Drag Race, which I had to stop watching when it switched from Logo to Bravo, and in retrospect that probably had something to do with our different ambivalent relationships to womanhood as performed through drag?

Michelle Visage, another cis woman and drag queen, in a Drag Race-typical look

I like drag as an art form - I mean, I basically think gender is fucked, and anything that fucks with gender is therefore all right by me. in particular, because of who I am as a person, I like low-budget, amateur, and experimental art that questions the limits of performance, gender, expectations, you name it. if someone's sewn into a trash bag or has a tiny alien baby growing from somewhere precarious or otherwise looks insane, I'm probably into it.

what I really struggle with in terms of this kind of drag is: when is a cis woman performing drag that subverts gendered expectations and beauty standards, and when is she – well – performing celebrity womanhood?

I remember when contouring was only used by drag queens! I remember when the Kardashians et al. took it and popularized it for straight women! I started writing an essay about it, because it made me feel nuts! but that was ten years ago – and however the "clean girl" aesthetic catches on among my students, until the Sephora era ends, as long as a Kardashian is or was recently contouring, can it still be a drag aesthetic? is totally based on context? is it a "trust me, you know it when you see it" kind of thing?

like, I think the above photo of Chappell Roan is definitely drag, at least in terms of makeup. but is she performing drag here?

Roan at an earlier Grammy event, in another typical look

to me, drag is both a valuable queer art form and, like lots of other art forms, something that relies on a kind of baseline misogyny in order to function - men dressed up as women* is entertaining in part because they are not women. right? and the exaggerated performance of womanhood is entertaining at least in part because it is mocking, making fun of, or otherwise questioning and puncturing womanhood.

*yes, historically many people who did drag were not men but trans women, there's lots of complex overlap here! I'm not meaning to erase these people from drag history. however, cross-dressing/dressing against the gender one was assigned sometimes, for fun or performance, and all the time, as an identity, have never been the same thing. I'm just talking about the former even though it was also done by some people who did the latter.

I'm not particularly invested in maintaining womanhood as a category, and I definitely don't think all drag is actively misogynist (though some is, including some I have enjoyed). but I do think drag doesn't exist without misogyny.

then again neither do novels so like, look, whatever

I do also feel complicated (though not negative, none of this is negative, again: I do actually like drag) about cis men dressing up as women but I feel like I have been told enough that I'm Not A Man Or A Straight Woman And I Can't Understand Why That Matters to stay the fuck outta that one

some drag queens use their drag to poke and prod at gender limitations and some use it to create authentic selves not otherwise accessible to them and some use it to get famous and some use it to show [other] cis women how gross they are.

but ultimately I don't really care about any individual person's drag, I'm trying to think through why I feel so complicated about women dressing up as performances of women historically created by mostly, though not entirely, gay men?

and is it fucked up & homophobic & misogynist to feel complicated about it, as I have been told?

[naryrising]

Fandom Trumps Hate 2025

As I have in the past few years, I'll be participating again in Fandom Trumps Hate, a fanworks auction to support progressive nonprofit organizations. It's a great event that helps raise funds for groups working on a variety of issues, from environmental causes to LGBTQ rights to defending democracy. Bidders get to choose which organization(s) to donate to (see the list of 2025's supported orgs here), and in return receive a fic from me as a thank-you gift.

I'm offering three auctions this year:

A fic of under 5k in Ace Attorney, Haikyuu, or any fandom I've written for previously (other than HP or ASOIAF), up to E rating, minimum bid $5.

A fic of 5-10k in MXTX fandoms (SVSSS, MDZS, or TGCF), Mysterious Lotus Casebook, or Thai BL (Kinnporsche, MYATB, 4 Minutes, Pit Babe, 3 Will Be Free), up to E rating, minimum bid $10.

A fic of under 5k in Dungeon Meshi, Buddy Daddies, or Dr. Stone, up to E rating, minimum bid $5.

Here are some reviews from high bidders I've worked with in the past:

"You did such a beautiful job of bring the emotional and psychological side together with the hotness. I feel like you really saw the vision I was dreaming of."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you! This was sweet and sexy; funny and heartfelt, such a joy to read!"

"This is probably the best fic I've ever received, I love it so much!!! Above all else. it's really great to see smut that is not only hot as hell but also does double-duty as character development and furthering the story, I don't know how you do it Nary! This is definitely getting downloaded to my e-reader so I can have it with me everywhere I go."

If what you're looking for is a fic in one of the above fandoms (or any other that I've written previously other than ASOIAF or HP, see list here) and you have questions about whether I could do what you're interested in, please feel free to message me here on Tumblr and ask! I would love to work with you to create the smut fic of your dreams!

You can view my listings here. Bidding opens on Feb. 25th at 8am ET and closes on March 1st at 8pm ET!

Please check @fandomtrumpshate out, and see if something catches your eye that you would like to bid on. There are over 1200 creators offering over 1600 fanworks this year - not just fics but things like art, podfic, remixes, meta/essays, fan labour like betaing, and even physical items like fibrecrafts, jewelry, and fanbinding in the adjacent fan crafts bazaar. It's a really fun and exciting event, and helps support important causes! I hope you'll take a look even if my auctions aren't to your taste, and I'm sure you can find something that interests you!

[ask-the-koopa-family]

A little story between Bowser and Cherry...where Cherry speaks French👀

Art/story is mine dont copy/repost!

The evening air was cool and crisp, the stars scattered like glittering jewels over the castle balcony. Bowser leaned heavily against the railing, his gaze fixed on the horizon. It was rare for him to have moments like this—quiet, peaceful, and undisturbed.

Cherry strolled up beside him, her movements graceful and deliberate. She rested her elbows on the railing, her lips curling into a sly smile. “Well, well… Is the mighty King Bowser… relaxing?” she teased, her voice dripping with playful amusement.

Bowser grunted, glancing at her briefly before looking back out at the night. “Even kings deserve a moment of peace,” he replied, his tone gruff but not unkind.

Cherry tilted her head, studying him with a mischievous glint in her eye. “It’s nice to see you like this. Almost… charmant.”

Bowser’s brow furrowed as he turned to her, confused. “Charmant? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Cherry chuckled softly, leaning closer to him. “Oh, rien… just a little French. But its easy, it means… charming.” Her gaze lingered on him, her smile widening as she watched his tough exterior begin to crack.

Bowser blinked, caught off guard. “French, huh? Since when do you speak… that?”

Cherry’s grin turned playful, her voice lowering to a murmur. “Since always, mon roi,” she said smoothly, her words rolling off her tongue like silk. She stepped closer, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Tu sais, tu es vraiment séduisant quand tu essaies d’être dur.”

Bowser stiffened, feeling his stomach flip at her tone. “What… what does that mean?” he stammered, his usual confidence faltering.

Cherry’s laugh was light and teasing as she reached out, brushing her fingers against his arm. “It means you’re very… attractive when you act tough.”

Bowser’s face turned red, and he tried to compose himself, puffing out his chest. “W-well, I am tough!”

Cherry smirked, her expression unrelenting. “Bien sûr… mais tu es aussi mignon, tu sais.”

His eyes widened, the unfamiliar word tripping him up. “M-mignon? What’s that now?”

Cherry giggled, her fingers grazing his hand as she leaned on the railing again. “It means you’re cute.”

Bowser’s jaw dropped slightly, his flustered expression earning another laugh from Cherry. “I—uh… you can’t just say stuff like that and expect me to… uh…”

“Oh, but I think I can,” Cherry said with a wink, leaning closer until their faces were just inches apart. “You like it, don’t you? Admit it, mon roi.”

Bowser cleared his throat, trying desperately to regain control of the situation. “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cherry’s grin widened as she leaned even closer, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “Peut-être que tu n’es pas aussi coriace que tu le penses.”

Bowser’s heart raced as he stared at her, his breath catching. The words, her tone, the way her eyes sparkled with teasing confidence—it was too much. “Alright,” he muttered, his voice quieter now. “Maybe… maybe I don’t mind it.”

Cherry smiled triumphantly, brushing her fingers along his cheek. “I thought so.” She stepped back just enough to meet his gaze fully, her expression softening. “You know, Bowser… you don’t always have to be the tough guy. I like you just as you are—charmant, coriace, et mignon.”

Bowser let out a huff, finally managing a small smirk. “You really like this French stuff, huh?”

Cherry nodded, her tone sincere now. “I do. And it’s even better when it flusters you.” She slipped her hand into his, her smile turning tender. “But seriously… I’m glad I’m here with you. Pour toujours.”

Bowser didn’t fully understand the last words, but the warmth in her voice was unmistakable. He gave her hand a light squeeze, his smirk softening into something almost shy. “Yeah… me too.”

Under the starlit sky, the King and Queen stood together, their bond growing stronger with every word, every glance, and every shared moment of quiet affection.